Ex Autographo [sigillo carente] penes Ric: Rawlinson, L.L.D. Oxon R.et AT.S.S. 1754. Engraved facsimile of a c.1150 Latin grant of land at Iford, East Sussex to the Priory of St Pancras. Watermarked laid paper, 200 x 160mm, 8 x 6¼". A good impression with wide margins. A frankalmoigne: a tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands given to them and their successors forever, usually on condition of praying for the soul of the donor and his heirs - called also tenure by free alms. The Priory of St Pancras was the first Cluniac house in England and had one of the largest monastic churches in the country. It was set within an extensive walled and gated precinct laid out in a commanding location fronting the tidal shore-line at the head of the Ouse valley to the south of Lewes. The Priory was endowed with churches and extensive holdings, such as this one, throughout the country. The original document is from the collection of Richard Rawlinson (1690 – 1755), a clergyman and antiquarian who bequeathed a huge collection of books and manuscripts to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1716 he was ordained, but as he was a nonjuror and Jacobite, the ceremony was performed by a nonjuring bishop, Jeremy Collier. In 1728 he became a bishop, but seems to have preferred to pass his time in collecting books and manuscripts, pictures and curiosities, rather than in discharging his episcopal functions. At his death Rawlinson left to the Library 5,205 manuscripts bound in volumes that include many rare broadsides and other printed ephemera, his curiosities, and some other property that endowed a professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. The Rawlinsonian Professor of Anglo-Saxon was first appointed in 1795. He was also a benefactor to St John's College, Oxford.
[Ref: 24891] £140.00